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Every year for the past 17 years has been the year of DNA for me, but for many millions, 2017 has been the year of DNA. DNA testing has become a phenomenon in its own right.

It was in 2013 that Spencer Wells predicted that 2014 would be the “year of infection.” Spencer was right and in 2014 DNA joined the ranks of household words. I saw DNA in ads that year, for the first time, not related to DNA testing or health as in, “It’s in our DNA.”

In 2014, it seemed like most people had heard of DNA, even if they weren’t all testing yet. John Q. Public was becoming comfortable with DNA.

In 2017 – DNA Is Mainstream

If you’re a genealogist, you certainly know about DNA testing, and you’re behind the times if you haven’t tested. DNA testing is now an expected tool for genealogists, and part of a comprehensive proof statement that meets the genealogical proof standard which includes “a reasonably exhaustive search.” If you haven’t applied DNA, you haven’t done a reasonably exhaustive search.

A paper trail is no longer sufficient alone.

When I used to speak to genealogy groups about DNA testing, back in the dark ages, in the early 2000s, and I asked how many had tested, a few would raise their hands – on a good day.

In October, when I asked that same question in Ireland, more than half the room raised their hand – and I hope the other half went right out and purchased DNA test kits!

Consequently, because the rabid genealogical market is now pretty much saturated, the DNA testing companies needed to find a way to attract new customers, and they have.

2017 – The Year of Ethnicity

I’m not positive that the methodology some of the major companies utilized to attract new consumers is ideal, but nonetheless, advertising has attracted many new people to genetic genealogy through ethnicity testing.

If you’re a seasoned genetic genealogist, I know for sure that you’re groaning now, because the questions that are asked by disappointed testers AFTER the results come back and aren’t what people expected find their way to the forums that genetic genealogists peruse daily.

More ethnicity results are available from vendors and third parties alike – just about every place you look it seems. It appears that lots of folks think ethnicity testing is a shortcut to instant genealogy. Spit, mail, wait and voila – but there is no shortcut. Since most people don’t realize that until after they test, ethnicity testing is becoming ever more popular with more vendors emerging.

In the spring, LivingDNA began delivering ethnicity results and a few months later, MyHeritage as well. Ethnicity is hot and companies are seizing a revenue opportunity.

Now, the good news is that perhaps some of these new ethnicity testers can be converted into genealogists. We just have to view ethnicity testing as tempting bait, or hopefully, a gateway drug…

2017 – The Year of Explosive Growth

DNA testing has become that snowball rolling downhill that morphed into an avalanche. More people are seeing commercials, more people are testing, and people are talking to friends and co-workers at the water cooler who decide to test. I passed a table of diners in Germany in July to overhear, in English, discussion about ethnicity-focused DNA testing.

If you haven’t heard of DTC, direct to consumer, DNA testing, you’re living under a rock or maybe in a third world country without either internet or TV.

Most of the genetic genealogy companies are fairly closed-lipped about their data base size of DNA testers, but Ancestry isn’t. They have gone from about 2 million near the end of 2016 to 5 million in August 2017 to at least 7 million now. They haven’t said for sure, but extrapolating from what they have said, I feel safe with 7 million as a LOW estimate and possibly as many as 10 million following the holiday sales.

Advertising obviously pays off.

MyHeritage recently announced that their data base has reached 1 million, with only about 20% of those being transfers.

Based on the industry rumble, I suspect that the other DNA testing companies have had banner years as well.

The good news is that all of these new testers means that anyone who has tested at any of the major vendors is going to get lots of matches soon. Santa, it seems, has heard about DNA testing too and test kits fit into stockings!

That’s even better news for all of us who are in multiple data bases – and even more reason to test at all of the 4 major companies who provide DNA matching for their customers: Family Tree DNA, Ancestry, MyHeritage and 23andMe.

2017 – The Year of Vendor and Industry Churn

So much happened in 2017, it’s difficult to keep up.

MyHeritage entered the DNA testing arena and began matching in September of 2016. Frankly, they had a mess, but they have been working in 2017 to improve the situation. Let’s just say they still have some work to do, but at least they acknowledge that and are making progress.

MyHeritage has a rather extensive user base in Europe. Because of their European draw, their records collections and the ability to transfer results into their data base, they have become the 4th vendor in a field that used to be 3.

In March 2017, Family Tree DNA announced that they were accepting transfers of both the Ancestry V2 test, in place since May of 2016, along with the 23andMe V4 test, available since November 2013, for free. MyHeritage has since been added to that list. The Family Tree DNA announcement provided testers with another avenue for matching and advanced tools.

Illumina obsoleted their OmniExpress chip, forcing vendors to Illumina’s new GSA chip which also forces vendors to use imputation. I swear, imputation is a swear word. Illumina gets the lump of coal award for 2017.

I wrote about imputation here, but in a nutshell, the vendors are now being forced to test only about 20% of the DNA locations available on the previous Illumina chip, and impute or infer using statistics the values in the rest of the DNA locations that they previously could test.

Early imputation implementers include LivingDNA (ethnicity only), MyHeritage (to equalize the locations of various vendor’s different chips), DNA.Land (whose matching is far from ideal) and 23andMe, who seems, for the most part, to have done a reasonable job. Of course, the only way to tell for sure at 23andMe is to test again on the V5 chip and compare to V3 and V4 chip matches. Given that I’ve already paid 3 times to test myself at 23andMe (V2, 3 and 4), I’m not keen on paying a 4th time for the V5 version.

23andMe moved to the V5 Illumina GSA chip in August which is not compatible with any earlier chip versions.

Needless to say, the Illumina chip change has forced vendors away from focusing on new products in order to develop imputation code in order to remain backwards compatible with their own products from an earlier chip set.

GedMatch introduced their sandbox area, Genesis, where people can upload files that are not compatible with the traditional vendor files. This includes the GSA chip results (23andMe V5,) exome tests and others. The purpose of the sandbox is so that GedMatch can figure out how to work with these files that aren’t compatible with the typical autosomal test files. The process has been interesting and enlightening, but people either don’t understand or forget that it’s a sandbox, an experiment, for all involved – including GedMatch. Welcome to living on the genetic frontier!

I assembled a chart of who loves who – meaning which vendors accept transfers from which other vendors.

I suspect but don’t know that Ancestry is doing some form of imputation between their V1 and V2 chips. About a month before their new chip implementation in May of 2016, Ancestry made a change in their matching routine that resulting in a significant shift in people’s matches.

Because of Ancestry’s use of the Timber algorithm to downweight some segments and strip out others altogether, it’s difficult to understand where matching issues may arise. Furthermore, there is no way to know that there are matching issues unless you and another individual have transferred results to either Family Tree DNA or GedMatch, neither of which remove any matching segments.

Other developments of note include the fact that Family Tree DNA moved to mitochondrial DNA build V17 and updated their Y DNA to hg38 of the human reference genome – both huge undertakings requiring the reprocessing of customer data. Think of both of those updates as housekeeping. No one wants to do it, but it’s necessary.

23andMe FINALLY finished transferring their customer base to the “New Experience,” but many of the older features we liked are now gone. However, customers can now opt in to open matching, which is a definite improvement. 23andMe, having been the first company to enter the genetic genealogy autosomal matching marketspace has really become lackluster. They could have owned this space but chose not to focus on genealogy tools. In my opinion, they are now relegated to fourth place out of a field of 4.

Ancestry has updated their Genetic Communities feature a couple of times this year. Genetic Communities is interesting and more helpful than ethnicity estimates, but neither are nearly as helpful as a chromosome browser would be.

I’m sure that the repeated requests, begging and community level tantrum throwing in an attempt to convince Ancestry to produce a chromosome browser is beyond beating a dead horse now. That dead horse is now skeletal, and no sign of a chromosome browser. Sigh:(

The good news is that anyone who wants a chromosome browser can transfer their results to Family Tree DNA or GedMatch (both for free) and utilize a chromosome browser and other tools at either or both of those locations. Family Tree DNA charges a one time $19 fee to access their advanced tools and GedMatch offers a monthly $10 subscription. Both are absolutely worth every dime. The bad news is, of course, that you have to convince your match or matches to transfer as well.

If you can convince your matches to transfer to (or test at) Family Tree DNA, their tools include phased Family Matching which utilizes a combination of user trees, the DNA of the tester combined with the DNA of family matches to indicate to the user which side, maternal or paternal (or both), a particular match stems from.

Sites to keep your eye on include Jonny Perl’s tools which include DNAPainter, as well as Goran Rundfeldt’s DNA Genealogy Experiment. You may recall that in October Goran brought us the fantastic Triangulator tool to use with Family Tree DNA results. A few community members expressed concern about triangulation relative to privacy, so the tool has been (I hope only temporarily) disabled as the involved parties work through the details. We need Goran’s triangulation tool! Goran has developed other world class tools as well, as you can see from his website, and I hope we see more of both Goran and Jonny in 2018.

In 2017, a number of new “free” sites that encourage you to upload your DNA have sprung up. My advice – remember, there really is no such thing as a free lunch. Ask yourself why, what’s in it for them. Review ALL OF THE documents and fine print relative to safety, privacy and what is going to be done with your DNA. Think about what recourse you might or might not have. Why would you trust them?

My rule of thumb, if the company is outside of the US, I’m immediately slightly hesitant because they don’t fall under US laws. If they are outside of Europe or Canada, I’m even more hesitant. If the company is associated with a country that is unfriendly to the US, I unequivocally refuse. For example, riddle me this – what happens if a Chinese (or fill-in-the-blank country) company violates an agreement regarding your DNA and privacy? What, exactly, are you going to do about it from wherever you live?

2017 – The Year of Marketplace Apps

Third party genetics apps are emerging and are beginning to make an impact.

GedMatch, as always, has continued to quietly add to their offerings for genetic genealogists, as had DNAGedcom.com. While these two aren’t exactly an “app”, per se, they are certainly primary players in the third party space. I use both and will be publishing an article early in 2018 about a very useful tool at DNAGedcom.

Another application that I don’t use due to the complex setup (which I’ve now tried twice and abandoned) is Genome Mate Pro which coordinates your autosomal results from multiple vendors. Some people love this program. I’ll try, again, in 2018 and see if I can make it all the way through the setup process.

The real news here are the new marketplace apps based on Exome testing.

Helix and their partners offer a number of apps that may be of interest for consumers. Helix began offering a “test once, buy often” marketplace model where the consumer pays a nominal price for exome sequencing ($80), significantly under market pricing ($500), but then the consumer purchases DNA apps through the Helix store. The apps access the original DNA test to produce results. The consumer does NOT receive their downloadable raw data, only data through the apps, which is a departure from the expected norm. Then again, the consumer pays a drastically reduced price and downloadable exome results are available elsewhere for full price.

The Helix concept is that lots of apps will be developed, meaning that you, the consumer, will be interested and purchase often – allowing Helix to recoup their sequencing investment over time.

Aside from the Insitome apps, I think that the personalized clothes are cute, if extremely overpriced. But what the heck, they’re fun and raise awareness of DNA testing – a good thing! After all, who am I to talk, I’ve made DNA quilts and have DNA clothing too.

Having said that, I’m extremely skeptical about some of the other apps, like “Wine Explorer.” Seriously???

But then again, if you named an app “I Have More Money Than Brains,” it probably wouldn’t sell well.

Other apps, like Ancestry’s WeRelate (available for smartphones) is entertaining, but is also unfortunately EXTREMELY misleading. WeRelate conflates multiple trees, generally incorrectly, to suggest to you and another person on your Facebook friends list are related, or that you are related to famous people. Judy Russell reviews that app here in the article, “No, actually, we’re not related.” No. Just no!

I feel strongly that companies that utilize our genetic data for anything have a moral responsibility for accuracy, and the WeRelate app clearly does NOT make the grade, and Ancestry knows that. I really don’t believe that entertaining customers with half-truths (or less) is more important than accuracy – but then again, here I go just being an old-fashioned fuddy dud expecting ethics.

And then, there’s the snake oil. You knew it was going to happen because there is always someone who can be convinced to purchase just about anything. Think midnight infomercials. The problem is that many consumers really don’t know how to tell snake oil from the rest in the emerging DNA field.

You can now purchase DNA testing for almost anything. Dating, diet, exercise, your taste in wine and of course, vitamins and supplements. If you can think of an opportunity, someone will dream up a test.

How many of these are legitimate or valid? Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m exceedingly suspicious of a great many, especially those where I can find no legitimate scientific studies to back what appear to be rather outrageous claims.

My main concern is that the entire DTC testing industry will be tarred by the brush of a few unethical opportunists.

2017 – The Year of Focus on Privacy and Security

With increased consumer exposure comes increased notoriety. People are taking notice of DNA testing and it seems that everyone has an opinion, informed or not. There’s an old saying in marketing; “Talk about me good, talk about me bad, just talk about me.”

With all of the ads have come a commensurate amount of teeth gnashing and “the-sky-is-falling” type reporting. Unfortunately, many politicians don’t understand this industry and open mouth only to insert foot – except that most people don’t realize what they’ve done. I doubt that the politicians even understand that they are tasting toe-jam, because they haven’t taken the time to research and understand the industry. Sound bites and science don’t mix well.

The bad news is that next, the click-bait-focused press picks up on the stories and the next time you see anyone at lunch, they’re asking you if what they heard is true. Or, let’s hope that they ask you instead of just accepting what they heard as gospel. Hopefully if we’ve learned anything in this past year, it’s to verify, verify, verify.

I’ve been an advocate for a very long time of increased transparency from the testing companies as to what is actually done with our DNA, and under what circumstances. In other words, I want to know where my DNA is and what it’s being used for. Period.

Bennett Greenspan: “We could probably make a lot of money by selling the DNA data that we’ve been collecting over the years, but we feel that the only person that should have your DNA information is you. We don’t believe that it should be sold, traded or bartered.”

You can’t get more definitive than that.

DTC testing for genetic genealogy must be a self-regulating field, because the last thing we need is for the government to get involved, attempting to regulate something they don’t understand. I truly believe government interference by the name of regulation would spell the end of genetic genealogy as we know it today. DNA testing for genetic genealogy without sharing results is entirely pointless.

I’ve written about this topic in the past, but an update is warranted and I’ll be doing that sometime after the first of the year. Mostly, I just need to be able to stay awake while slogging through the required reading (at some vendor sites) of page after page AFTER PAGE of legalese😊

Consumers really shouldn’t have to do that, and if they do, a short, concise summary should be presented to them BEFORE they purchase so that they can make a truly informed decision.

Stay tuned on this one.

2017 – The Year of Education

The fantastic news is that with all of the new people testing, a huge, HUGE need for education exists. Even if 75% of the people who test don’t do anything with their results after that first peek, that still leaves a few million who are new to this field, want to engage and need some level of education.

In that vein, seminars are available through several groups and institutes, in person and online. Almost all of the leadership in this industry is involved in some educational capacity.

In addition to agendas focused on genetic genealogy and utilizing DNA personally, almost every genealogy conference now includes a significant number of sessions on DNA methods and tools. I remember the days when we were lucky to be allowed one session on the agenda, and then generally not without begging!

When considering both DNA testing and education, one needs to think about the goal. All customer goals are not the same, and neither are the approaches necessary to answer their questions in a relevant way.

New testers to the field fall into three primary groups today, and their educational needs are really quite different, because their goals, tools and approaches needed to reach those goals are different too.

Adoptees and genealogists employ two vastly different approaches utilizing a common tool, DNA, but for almost opposite purposes. Adoptees wish to utilize tests and trees to come forward in time to identify either currently living or recently living people while genealogists are interested in reaching backward in time to confirm or identify long dead ancestors. Those are really very different goals.

I’ve illustrated this in the graphic above. The tester in question uses their blue first cousin match to identify their unknown parent through the blue match’s known lineage, moving forward in time to identify the tester’s parent. In this case, the grandparent is known to the blue match, but not to the yellow tester. Identifying the grandparent through the blue match is the needed lynchpin clue to identify the unknown parent.

The yellow tester who already knows their maternal parent utilizes their peach second cousin match to verify or maybe identify their maternal great-grandmother who is already known to the peach match, moving backwards in time. Two different goals, same DNA test.

The three types of testers are:

Curious ethnicity testers who may not even realize that at least some of the vendors offer matching and other tools and services.

Genealogists who use close relatives to prove which sides of trees matches come from, and to triangulate matching segments to specific ancestors. In other words, working from the present back in time. The peach match and line above.

Adoptees and parent searches where testers hope to find a parent or siblings, but failing that, close relatives whose trees overlap with each other – pointing to a descendant as a candidate for a parent. These people work forward in time and aren’t interested in triangulation or proving ancestors and really don’t care about any of those types of tools, at least not until they identify their parent. This is the blue match above.

What these various groups of testers want and need, and therefore their priorities are different in terms of their recommendations and comments in online forums and their input to vendors. Therefore, you find Facebook groups dedicated to Adoptees, for example, but you also find adoptees in more general genetic genealogy groups where genealogists are sometimes surprised when people focused on parent searches downplay or dismiss tools such as Y DNA, mitochondrial DNA and chromosome browsers that form the bedrock foundation of what genealogists need and require.

Fortunately, there’s room for everyone in this emerging field.

The great news is that educational opportunities are abundant now. I’m listing a few of the educational opportunities for all three groups of testers, in addition to my blog of course.😊

Remember that this blog is fully searchable by keyword or phrase in the little search box in the upper right hand corner. I see so many questions online that I’ve already answered!

About midyear 2018, this blog will reach 1000 published articles. This is article number 939. That’s amazing even to me! When I created this blog in July of 2012, I wasn’t sure I’d have enough to write about. That certainly has changed.

Beginning shortly, the tsunami of kits that were purchased during the holidays will begin producing matches, be it through DNA upgrades at Family Tree DNA, Big Y tests which were hot at year end, or new purchases through any of the vendors. I can hardly wait, and I have my list of brick walls that need to fall.

Family Tree DNA will be providing additional STR markers extracted from the Big Y test. These won’t replace any of the 111 markers offered separately today, because the extraction through NGS testing is not as reliable as direct STR testing for those markers, but the Big Y will offer genealogists a few hundred more STRs to utilize. Yes, I said a few hundred. The exact number has not yet been finalized.

Family Tree DNA says they will also be introducing new “qualify of life improvements” along with new privacy and consent settings. Let’s hope this means new features and tools will be released too.

MyHeritage says that they are introducing new “Discoveries” pages and a chromosome browser in January. They have also indicated that they are working on their matching issues. The chromosome browser is particularly good news, but matching must work accurately or the chromosome browser will show erroneous information. Let’s hope January brings all three features.

LivingDNA indicates that they will be introducing matching in 2018.

2018 – What Can You Do?

What can you do in 2018 to improve your odds of solving genealogy questions?

Test relatives

Transfer your results to as many data bases as possible (among the ones discussed above, after reading the terms and conditions, of course)

If you have transferred a version of your DNA that does not produce full results, such as the Ancestry V2 or 23andMe V4 test to Family Tree DNA, consider testing on the vendor’s own chip in order to obtain all matches, not just the closest matches available from an incompatible test transfer.

Find ways to share the stories of your ancestors. Stories are cousin bait. My 52 Ancestors series is living proof. People find the stories and often have additional facts, information or even photos. Some contacts qualify for DNA testing for Y or mtDNA lines. The GREAT NEWS is that Amy Johnson Crow is resuming the #52Ancestors project for 2018, providing hints and tips each week! Who knows what you might discover by sharing?! Here’s how to start a blog if you need some assistance. It’s easy – really!

Focus on the brick walls that you want to crumble and then put together both a test and analysis plan. That plan could include such things as:

o Find out if a male representing a Y line in your tree has tested, and if not, search through autosomal results to see if a male from that paternal surname line has tested and would be amenable to an upgrade.

o Mitochondrial DNA test people who descend through all females from various female ancestors in order to determine their origins. Y and mtDNA tests are an important part of a complete genealogy story – meaning the reasonably exhaustive search!

o Autosomal DNA test family members from various lines with the hope that matches will match you and them both.

o Test family members in order to confirm a particular ancestor – preferably people who descend from another child of that ancestor.

o Making sure your own DNA is in all 4 of the major vendors’ data bases, plus GedMatch. Look at it this way, everyone who is at GedMatch or at a third party (non-testing) site had to have tested at one of the major 4 vendors – so if you are in all of the vendor’s data bases, plus GedMatch, you’re covered.

Have a wonderful New Year and let’s make 2018 the year of newly discovered ancestors and solved mysteries!

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This week, a woman in North Carolina revealed that she descends from the extinct Beothuk tribe in Canada as a result of a DNA test from a Canadian DNA testing company. This has caused quite an uproar, in both genetic genealogy and Native American research communities, and has been resoundingly discredited by geneticists.

People’s motivation for wanting to know if they have Native heritage generally falls into the following categories:

Curiosity and a desire to confirm a family story

Desire to recover lost heritage

Desire to identify or join a tribe

Desire to obtain services provided to eligible tribal members, such as educational benefits

Desire to obtain benefits provided to eligible tribal members, such as a share of casino profits

Questions about DNA testing to reveal Native ancestry are the most common questions I receive and my Native DNA articles are the most visited on my website and blog.

Legitimate DNA Tests for Native Heritage

There are completely legitimate tests for Native ancestry, including the Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests for direct paternal (blue box genealogy line, below) and direct matrilineal lines (red circle genealogy line, below). Both Y and mitochondrial DNA have scientifically identified and confirmed haplogroups found only in Native Americans, as discussed in this article. Both Y and mitochondrial DNA at appropriate testing levels can identify a Native ancestor back in time thousands of years.

However, if the Native ancestor does not descend from the direct paternal or direct matrilineal lines, the only DNA test left is an autosomal test which tests all of your ancestral lines, but which can only reliably identify ancestral heritage for the past 5 or 6 generations in any of those lines due to recombination of DNA with the other parent in each generation. Autosomal tests provide you with percentage estimates of your ethnicity although they can vary widely between companies for various reasons. All three of these tests are available from Family Tree DNA as part of their normal product offering.

If you’d like to see an example of genealogy research combined with all three types of DNA testing for a Native Sioux man, please read about John Iron Moccasin.

Less Than Ethical DNA Tests for Native Heritage

Because of the desire within the consuming public to know more about their Native heritage, several specialty testing services have emerged to offer “Native American” tests. Recently, one, Accu-Metrics out of Canada has been highly criticized in the media for informing a woman that she was related to or descended from the extinct Beothuk tribe based on a match to a partial, damaged, mitochondrial sample from skeletal remains, now in housed in Scotland.

When you look at some of these sites, they spend a lot of time convincing you about the qualifications of the lab they use, but the real problem is not with the laboratory, but their interpretation of what those results mean to their clients – e.g. Beothuk.

Those of us who focus on Native American ancestry know unequivocally that “matching” someone with Native ancestry does NOT equate to being from that same tribe. In fact, we have people in the American Indian Project and various Native haplogroup projects who match each other with either Native Y or mitochondrial results who are tribally enrolled or descended from tribes from very different parts of the Americas, as far distant as Canada and South America.

Based on this 2007 paper, A Preliminary Analysis of the DNA and Diet of the Extinct Beothuk: A Systematic Approach to Ancient Human DNA, describing the analysis of the Beothuk remains, it appears that only the HVR1 region of the Beothuk skeletal remains were able to be partially sequenced. An HVR1 level only match between two people could be from thousands to tens of thousands of years ago.

According to Dr. Doron Behar’s paper, A ‘‘Copernican’’ Reassessment of the Human Mitochondrial DNA Tree from its Root, dating haplogroup formation, haplogroup C was formed about 24,000 years ago, give or take 5,000 years in either direction, and haplogroup X was formed about 32,000 years ago, give or take 12,000 years in either direction. There are individuals living in Europe and Asia, as well as the Americans who fall into various subgroups of haplogroup C and X, which are impossible to differentiate without testing beyond the HVR1 region. A match at the HVR1 level which only indicates C or X, without subgroups, could be from a very ancient common ancestor, back in Asia and does not necessarily indicate Native American heritage without additional testing. What this means is that someone whose ancestors have never lived outside of China, for example, would at the basic haplogroup level, C, match to the Beothuk remains because they shared a common ancestor 24,000 years ago.

Furthermore, many people are tribally enrolled whose mitochondrial or Y DNA would not be historically Native, because their tribal membership is not based on that ancestral line. Therefore, tribal membership alone is not predictive of a Native American Y or mitochondrial haplogroup. Matching someone who is tribally enrolled does not mean that your DNA is from that tribe, because their DNA from that line may not be historically Native either.

Tribes historically adopted non-Native people into the tribe, so finding a non-Native, meaning a European or African haplogroup in a tribal member is not unusual, even if the tribal member’s enrollment is based on that particular genealogical line. European or African DNA does not delegitimize their Native heritage or status, but finding a European or African haplogroup in a tribal member also does NOT mean that those haplogroups were historically Native, meaning pre-Columbian contact.

Worse yet, one company is taking this scenario a step further and is informing their clients that carry non-Native haplogroups that they have Native heritage because a group of their clients who “self-identified” as “Native,” meaning they believe their ancestor is Native, carry that haplogroup. The American myth of the “Indian Princess” is legendary and seldom do those stories pan out as accurate with DNA testing and traditional genealogical research. Basing one client’s identification as Native on another client’s family myth without corroboration is a mind-boggling stretch of logic. Most consumers who receive these reports never go any further, because they have achieved what they sought; “confirmation” of their Native heritage through DNA.

A match, even in the best of circumstances where the match does fall into the proven Native haplogroups does not automatically equal to tribal affiliation, and any company who suggests or says it does is substantially misleading their customers.

Native American linkage is based on a sample comparison to a proven member of the group, which identifies specific tribal linkage.

New for 2016: We can also determine if you belong to the 56 Native tribes from Mexico.

The DNA results can be used in enrollment, disenrollment, claiming social benefits, or simply for a peace of mind. We understand the impact that this testing service has on the First Nation and Native American community and we try to use our expertise for the community’s overall interests.

From Dr. Steven Carr, a geneticist at Memorial University in St. John’s (Canada) who has studied the Beothuk:

We do not have enough of a database to identify somebody as being Beothuk, so if somebody is told [that] by a company, I think we call that being lied to.

I would certainly agree with Dr. Carr’s statement.

According to the 2007 Beothuk paper, the Beothuk mitochondrial DNA fell into two of the 5 typical haplogroups for Native American mitochondrial DNA, C and X. However, only portions or subgroups of those 5 haplogroups are Native, and all Native people fall someplace in those 5 haplogroup subgroups, as documented here.

The Beothuk remains would match, at the basic haplogroup level, every other Native person in haplogroup C or X across all of North and South America. In fact, the Beothuk remains match every other person world-wide at the basic haplogroup level that fall into haplogroups C or X. It would take testing of the Beothuk remains at the full sequence level, which was not possible due to degradation of the remains, to be more specific. So telling a woman that she matches the Beothuk was irresponsible at best, because those Beothuk remains match every other person in haplogroup C or X, Native or not. Certainly, a DNA testing company knows this.

Accu-Metrics isn’t the only company stretching or twisting the truth for their own benefit, exploiting their clients. Dr Jennifer Raff, a geneticist who studies Native American DNA, discusses debunking what she terms pseudogenetics, when genetic information is twisted or otherwise misused to delude the unsuspecting. You can view her video here. About minute 48 or 49, she references another unethical company in the Native American DNA testing space.

Unfortunately, unethical companies are trying to exploit and take advantage of the Native people, of our ancestors, and ultimate of us, the consumers in our quest to find those ancestors.

Reputable DNA Testing

If you want to test for your Native heritage, be sure you understand what various tests can and cannot legitimately tell you, which tests are right for you based on your gender and known genealogy, and stay with a reputable testing company. I recommend Family Tree DNA for several reasons.

Family Tree DNA is the founding company in genetic genealogy

They have been in business 16 years

They are reputable

They are the only company to offer all three types of DNA tests

They offer matching between their clients whose DNA matches each other, giving you the opportunity to work together to identify your common link

They sponsor various free projects for customers to join to collaborate with other researchers with common interests

When evaluating tests from any other companies, if it sounds too good to be true, and no other company can seem to provide that same level of specificity, it probably is too good to be true. No company can identify your tribe through DNA testing. Don’t be a victim.

These three articles explain about DNA testing, and specifically Native DNA testing, and what can and cannot be accomplished.

For the past three years I’ve written a year-in-review article. You can see just how much the landscape has changed in the 2012, 2013 and 2014 versions.

This year, I’ve added a few specific “award” categories for people or firms that I feel need to be specially recognized as outstanding in one direction or the other.

In past years, some news items, announcements and innovations turned out to be very important like the Genographic Project and GedMatch, and others, well, not so much. Who among us has tested their full genome today, for example, or even their exome? And would you do with that information if you did?

And then there are the deaths, like the Sorenson database and Ancestry’s own Y and mitochondrial data base. I still shudder to think how much we’ve lost at the corporate hands of Ancestry.

In past years, there have often been big new announcements facilitated by new technology. In many ways, the big fish have been caught in a technology sense. Those big fish are autosomal DNA and the Big Y types of tests. Both of these have created an avalanche of data and we, personally and as a community, are still trying to sort through what all of this means genealogically and how to best utilize the information. Now we need tools.

This is probably illustrated most aptly by the expansion of the Y tree.

The SNP Tsunami Growing Pains Continue

Going from 800+ SNPs in 2012 to more than 35,000 SNPs today has introduced its own set of problems. First, there are multiple trees in existence, completely or partially maintained by different organizations for different purposes. Needless to say, these trees are not in sync with each other. The criteria for adding a SNP to the tree is decided by the owner or steward of that tree, and there is no agreement as to the definition of a valid SNP or how many instances of that SNP need to be in existence to be added to the tree.

This angst has been taking place for the most part outside of the public view, but it exists just the same.

For example, 23andMe still uses the old haplogroup names like R1b which have not been used in years elsewhere. Family Tree DNA is catching up with updating their tree, working with haplogroup administrators to be sure only high quality, proven SNPs are added to branches. ISOGG maintains another tree (one branch shown above) that’s publicly available, utilizing volunteers per haplogroup and sometimes per subgroup. Other individuals and organizations maintain other trees, or branches of trees, some very accurate and some adding a new “branch” with as little as one result.

The good news is that this will shake itself out. Personally, I’m voting for the more conservative approach for public reference trees to avoid “pollution” and a lot of shifting and changing downstream when it’s discovered that the single instance of a SNP is either invalid or in a different branch location. However, you have to start with an experimental or speculative tree before you can prove that a SNP is where it belongs or needs to be moved, so each of the trees has its own purpose.

The full trees I utilize are the Family Tree DNA tree, available for customers, the ISOGG tree and Ray Banks’ tree which includes locations where the SNPs are found when the geographic location is localized. Within haplogroup projects, I tend to use a speculative tree assembled by the administrators, if one is available. The haplogroup admins generally know more about their haplogroup or branch than anyone else.

The bad news is that this situation hasn’t shaken itself out yet, and due to the magnitude of the elephant at hand, I don’t think it will anytime soon. As this shuffling and shaking occurs, we learn more about where the SNPs are found today in the world, where they aren’t found, which SNPs are “family” or “clan” SNPs and the timeframes in which they were born.

In other words, this is a learning process for all involved – albeit a slow and frustrating one. However, we are making progress and the tree becomes more robust and accurate every year.

We may be having growing pains, but growing pains aren’t necessarily a bad thing and are necessary for growth.

Thank you to the hundreds of volunteers who work on these trees, and in particular, to Alice Fairhurst who has spearheaded the ISOGG tree for the past nine years. Alice retired from that volunteer position this year and is shown below after receiving two much-deserved awards for her service at the Family Tree DNA Conference in November.

Best Innovative Use of Integrated Data

Dr. Maurice Gleeson receives an award this year for the best genealogical use of integrated types of data. He has utilized just about every tool he can find to wring as much information as possible out of Y DNA results. Not only that, but he has taken great pains to share that information with us in presentations in the US and overseas, and by creating a video, noted in the article below. Thanks so much Maurice.

Making Sense of Y Data

The advent of massive amounts of Y DNA data has been both wonderful and perplexing. We as genetic genealogists want to know as much about our family as possible, including what the combination of STR and SNP markers means to us. In other words, we don’t want two separate “test results” but a genealogical marriage of the two.

I took a look at this from the perspective of the Estes DNA project. Of course, everyone else will view those results through the lens of their own surname or haplogroup project.

At the Family Tree DNA Conference in November, James Irvine and Maurice Gleeson both presented sessions on utilizing a combination of STR and SNP data and various tools in analyzing their individual projects.

Peter’s session at the genealogy conference in Sweden this year was packed. This photo, compliments of Katherine Borges, shows the room and the level of interest in Y-DNA and the messages it holds for genetic genealogists.

This type of work is the wave of the future, although hopefully it won’t be so manually intensive. However, the process of discovery is by definition laborious. From this early work will one day emerge reproducible methodologies, the fruits of which we will all enjoy.

Haplogroup Definitions and Discoveries Continue

Often, haplogroup work flies under the radar today and gets dwarfed by some of the larger citizen science projects, but this work is fundamentally important. In 2015, we made discoveries about haplogroups A4 and C, for example.

These aren’t the only discoveries, by any stretch of the imagination. For example, Mike Wadna, administrator for the Haplogroup R1b Project reports that there are now over 1500 SNPs on the R1b tree at Family Tree DNA – which is just about twice as many as were known in total for the entire Y tree in 2012 before the Genographic project was introduced.

The new Y DNA SNP Packs being introduced by Family Tree DNA which test more than 100 SNPs for about $100 will go a very long way in helping participants obtain haplogroup assignments further down the tree without doing the significantly more expensive Big Y test. For example, the R1b-DF49XM222 SNP Pack tests 157 SNPs for $109. Of course, if you want to discover your own private line of SNPs, you’ll have to take the Big Y. SNP Packs can only test what is already known and the Big Y is a test of discovery.

Best Blog

Jim Bartlett, hands down, receives this award for his new and wonderful blog, Segmentology.

Making Sense of Autosomal DNA

Our autosomal DNA results provide us with matches at each of the vendors and at GedMatch, but what do we DO with all those matches and how to we utilize the genetic match information? How to we translate those matches into ancestral information. And once we’ve assigned a common ancestor to a match with an individual, how does that match affect other matches on that same segment?

2015 has been the year of sorting through the pieces and defining terms like IBS (identical by state, which covers both identical by population and identical by chance) and IBD (identical by descent). There has been a lot written this year.

Jim Bartlett, a long-time autosomal researcher has introduced his new blog, Segmentology, to discuss his journey through mapping ancestors to his DNA segments. To the best of my knowledge, Jim has mapped more of his chromosomes than any other researcher, more than 80% to specific ancestors – and all of us can leverage Jim’s lessons learned.

Earlier in the year, there was a lot of discussion and dissention about the definition of and use of small segments. I utilize them, carefully, generally in conjunction with larger segments. Others don’t. Here’s my advice. Don’t get yourself hung up on this. You probably won’t need or use small segments until you get done with the larger segments, meaning low-hanging fruit, or unless you are doing a very specific research project. By the time you get to that point, you’ll understand this topic and you’ll realize that the various researchers agree about far more than they disagree, and you can make your own decision based on your individual circumstances. If you’re entirely endogamous, small segments may just make you crazy. However, if you’re chasing a colonial American ancestor, then you may need those small segments to identify or confirm that ancestor.

It is unfortunate, however, that all of the relevant articles are not represented in the ISOGG wiki, allowing people to fully educate themselves. Hopefully this can be updated shortly with the additional articles, listed above and from Jim Bartlett’s blog, published during this past year.

As we learn more about how to use autosomal DNA, we have begun to reconstruct our ancestors from the DNA of their descendants. Not as in cloning, but as in attributing DNA found in multiple descendants that originate from a common ancestor, or ancestral couple. The first foray into this arena was GedMatch with their Lazarus tool.

Some of you may remember J.R. Ewing on the television show called Dallas that ran from 1978 through 1991. J.R. Ewing, a greedy and unethical oil tycoon was one of the main characters. The series was utterly mesmerizing, and literally everyone tuned in. We all, and I mean universally, hated J.R. Ewing for what he unfeelingly and selfishly did to his family and others. Finally, in a cliffhanger end of the season episode, someone shot J.R. Ewing. OMG!!! We didn’t know who. We didn’t know if J.R. lived or died. Speculation was rampant. “Who shot JR?” was the theme on t-shirts everyplace that summer. J.R. Ewing, over time, became the man all of America loved to hate.

Ancestry has become the J.R. Ewing of the genealogy world for the same reasons.

In essence, in the genetic genealogy world, Ancestry introduced a substandard DNA product, which remains substandard years later with no chromosome browser or comparison tools that we need….and they have the unmitigated audacity to try to convince us we really don’t need those tools anyway. Kind of like trying to convince someone with a car that they don’t need tires.

Worse, yet, they’ve introduced “better” tools (New Ancestor Discoveries), as in tools that were going to be better than a chromosome browser. New Ancestor Discoveries “gives us” ancestors that aren’t ours. Sadly, there are many genealogists being led down the wrong path with no compass available.

Ancestry’s history of corporate stewardship is abysmal and continues with the obsolescence of various products and services including the Sorenson DNA database, their own Y and mtDNA database, MyFamily and most recently, Family Tree Maker. While the Family Tree Maker announcement has been met with great gnashing of teeth and angst among their customers, there are other software programs available. Ancestry’s choices to obsolete the DNA data bases is irrecoverable and a huge loss to the genetic genealogy community. That information is lost forever and not available elsewhere – a priceless, irreplaceable international treasure intentionally trashed.

If Ancestry had not bought up nearly all of the competing resources, people would be cancelling their subscriptions in droves to use another company – any other company. But there really is no one else anymore. Ancestry knows this, so they have become the J.R. Ewing of the genealogy world – uncaring about the effects of their decisions on their customers or the community as a whole. It’s hard for me to believe they have knowingly created such wholesale animosity within their own customer base. I think having a job as a customer service rep at Ancestry would be an extremely undesirable job right now. Many customers are furious and Ancestry has managed to upset pretty much everyone one way or another in 2015.

In October, 23andMe announced that it has reached an agreement with the FDA about reporting some health information such as carrier status and traits to their clients. As a part of or perhaps as a result of that agreement, 23andMe is dramatically changing the user experience.

In some aspects, the process will be simplified for genealogists with a universal opt-in. However, other functions are being removed and the price has doubled. New advertising says little or nothing about genealogy and is entirely medically focused. That combined with the move of the trees offsite to MyHeritage seems to signal that 23andMe has lost any commitment they had to the genetic genealogy community, effectively abandoning the group entirely that pulled their collective bacon out of the fire. This is somehow greatly ironic in light of the fact that it was the genetic genealogy community through their testing recommendations that kept 23andMe in business for the two years, from November of 2013 through October of 2015 when the FDA had the health portion of their testing shut down. This is a mighty fine thank you.

As a result of the changes at 23andMe relative to genealogy, the genetic genealogy community has largely withdrawn their support and recommendations to test at 23andMe in favor of Ancestry and Family Tree DNA.

My account at 23andMe has not yet been converted to the new format, so I cannot personally comment on the format changes yet, but I will write about the experience in 2016 after my account is converted.

Furthermore, I will also be writing a new autosomal vendor testing comparison article after their new platform is released.

Another award this year is the Cone of Shame award which is also awarded to both Ancestry and 23andMe for their methodology of obtaining “consent” to sell their customers’, meaning our, DNA and associated information.

Now, both Ancestry and 23andMe have made research arrangements and state in their release and privacy verbiage that all customers must electronically sign (or click through) when purchasing their DNA tests that they can sell, at minimum, your anonymized DNA data, without any further consent. And there is no opt-out at that level.

They can also use our DNA and data internally, meaning that 23andMe’s dream of creating and patenting new drugs can come true based on your DNA that you submitted for genealogical purposes, even if they never sell it to anyone else.

23andMe is now looking at expanding beyond the development of DNA testing and exploring the possibility of developing its own medications. In July, the company raised $79 million to partly fund that effort. Additionally, the funding will likely help the company continue with the development of its new therapeutics division. In March, 23andMe began to delve into the therapeutics market, to create a third pillar behind the company’s personal genetics tests and sales of genetic data to pharmaceutical companies.

Given that the future of genetic genealogy at these two companies seems to be tied to the sale of their customer’s genetic and other information, which, based on the above, is very clearly worth big bucks, I feel that the fact that these companies are selling and utilizing their customer’s information in this manner should be fully disclosed. Even more appropriate, the DNA information should not be sold or utilized for research without an informed consent that would traditionally be used for research subjects.

Within the past few days, I wrote an article, providing specifics and calling on both companies to do the following.

To minimally create transparent, understandable verbiage that informs their customers before the end of the purchase process that their DNA will be sold or utilized for unspecified research with the intention of financial gain and that there is no opt-out. However, a preferred plan of action would be a combination of 2 and 3, below.

Implement a plan where customer DNA can never be utilized for anything other than to deliver the services to the consumers that they purchased unless a separate, fully informed consent authorization is signed for each research project, without coercion, meaning that the client does not have to sign the consent to obtain any of the DNA testing or services.

To immediately stop utilizing the DNA information and results from customers who have already tested until they have signed an appropriate informed consent form for each research project in which their DNA or other information will be utilized.

The Citizen Science Leadership Award this year goes to Blaine Bettinger for initiating the Shared cM Project, a crowdsourced project which benefits everyone.

Citizen Scientists Continue to Push the Edges of the Envelope with the Shared cM Project

Citizen scientists, in the words of Dr. Doron Behar, “are not amateurs.” In fact, citizen scientists have been contributing mightily and pushing the edge of the genetic genealogy frontier consistently now for 15 years. This trend continues, with new discoveries and new ways of viewing and utilizing information we already have.

For example, Blaine Bettinger’s Shared cM Project was begun in March and continues today. This important project has provided real life information as to the real matching amounts and ranges between people of different relationships, such as first cousins, for example, as compared to theoretical match amounts. This wonderful project produced results such as this:

I don’t think Blaine initially expected this project to continue, but it has and you can read about it, see the rest of the results, and contribute your own data here. Blaine has written several other articles on this topic as well, available at the same link.

I hope more genetic genealogists will compile and contribute this type of real world data as we move forward. If you have compiled something like this, the Surname DNA Journal is peer reviewed and always looking for quality articles for publication.

Privacy, Law Enforcement and DNA

Unfortunately, in May, a situation by which Y DNA was utilized in a murder investigation was reported in a sensationalist “scare” type fashion. This action provided cause, ammunition or an excuse for Ancestry to remove the Sorenson data base from public view.

I find this exceedingly, exceedingly unfortunate. Given Ancestry’s history with obsoleting older data bases instead of updating them, I’m suspecting this was an opportune moment for Ancestry to be able to withdraw this database, removing a support or upgrade problem from their plate and blame the problem on either law enforcement or the associated reporting.

I haven’t said much about this situation, in part because I’m not a lawyer and in part because the topic is so controversial and there is no possible benefit since the damage has already been done. Unfortunately, nothing anyone can say or has said will bring back the Sorenson (or Ancestry) data bases and arguments would be for naught. We already beat this dead horse a year ago when Ancestry obsoleted their own data base. On this topic, be sure to read Judy Russell’s articles and her sources as well for the “rest of the story.”

One of the best ongoing sources for this information is Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog. He covered most of the new articles and there have been several. That’s the good news and the bad news, all rolled into one. http://dienekes.blogspot.com/

I have covered several that were of particular interest to the evolution of Europeans and Native Americans.

I know of several projects involving ancient DNA that are in process now, so 2016 promises to be a wonderful ancient DNA year!

Education

Many, many new people discover genetic genealogy every day and education continues to be an ongoing and increasing need. It’s a wonderful sign that all major conferences now include genetic genealogy, many with a specific track.

The European conferences have done a great deal to bring genetic genealogy testing to Europeans. European testing benefits those of us whose ancestors were European before immigrating to North America. This year, ISOGG volunteers staffed booths and gave presentations at genealogy conferences in Birmingham, England, Dublin, Ireland and in Nyköping, Sweden, shown below, photo compliments of Catherine Borges.

Several great new online educational opportunities arose this year, outside of conferences, for which I’m very grateful.

Family Tree DNA receives the Education Award this year along with a huge vote of gratitude for their 11 years of genetic genealogy conferences. They are the only testing or genealogy company to hold a conference of this type and they do a fantastic job. Furthermore, they sponsor additional educational events by providing the “theater” for DNA presentations at international events such as the Who Do You Think You Are conference in England. Thank you Family Tree DNA.

Family Tree DNA Conference

The Family Tree DNA Conference, held in November, was a hit once again. I’m not a typical genealogy conference person. My focus is on genetic genealogy, so I want to attend a conference where I can learn something new, something leading edge about the science of genetic genealogy – and that conference is definitely the Family Tree DNA conference.

Furthermore, Family Tree DNA offers tours of their lab on the Monday following the conference for attendees, and actively solicits input on their products and features from conference attendees and project administrators.

In 2014, I presented a wish list for 2015 and it didn’t do very well. Will my 2015 list for 2016 fare any better?

Ancestry restores Sorenson and their own Y and mtDNA data bases in some format or contributes to an independent organization like ISOGG.

Ancestry provides chromosome browser.

Ancestry removes or revamps Timber in order to restore legitimate matches removed by Timber algorithm.

Fully informed consent (per research project) implemented by 23andMe and Ancestry, and any other vendor who might aspire to sell consumer DNA or related information, without coercion, and not as a prerequisite for purchasing a DNA testing product. DNA and information will not be shared or utilized internally or externally without informed consent and current DNA information will cease being used in this fashion until informed consent is granted by customers who have already tested.

Improved ethnicity reporting at all vendors including ancient samples and additional reference samples for Native Americans.

Autosomal Triangulation tools at all vendors.

Big Y and STR integration and analysis enhancement at Family Tree DNA.

Ancestor Reconstruction

Mitochondrial and Y DNA search tools by ancestor and ancestral line at Family Tree DNA.

Improved tree at Family Tree DNA – along with new search capabilities.

23andMe restores lost capabilities, drops price, makes changes and adds features previously submitted as suggestions by community ambassadors.

More tools (This is equivalent to “bring me some surprises” on my Santa list as a kid.)

My own goals haven’t changed much over the years. I still just want to be able to confirm my genealogy, to learn as much as I can about each ancestor, and to break down brick walls and fill in gaps.

I’m very hopeful each year as more tools and methodologies emerge. More people test, each one providing a unique opportunity to match and to understand our past, individually and collectively. Every year genetic genealogy gets better! I can’t wait to see what 2016 has in store.

This slide, by Robert Baber, pretty well sums up our group obsession and what we focus on every year at the Family Tree DNA administrator’s conference in Houston, Texas.

Getting to Houston, this year, was a whole lot easier than getting out of Houston. They had storms yesterday and many of us spent the entire day becoming intimately familiar with the airport. Jennifer Zinck, of Ancestor Central, is still there today and doesn’t have a flight until late.

And this is how my day ended, after I finally got out of Houston and into my home airport. This isn’t at the airport, by the way. Everything was fine there, but I made the apparent error of stopping at a Starbucks on the way home. This is the parking lot outside an hour or so later. What can I say? At least I had my coffee, and AAA rocks, as did the tow truck driver and my daughter for getting out of bed to come and rescue me!!! Hmmm, I think maybe things have gone full circle. I remember when I used to go and rescue her:)

So far, today hasn’t improved any, so let’s talk about something much more pleasant…the conference itself.

Resources

One of the reasons I mentioned Jennifer Zinck, aside from the fact that she’s still stuck in the airport, is because she did a great job actually covering the conference as it happened. Since I had some time yesterday to visit with her since our gates weren’t terribly far apart, I asked her how she got that done. I took notes too, and photos, but she turned out a prodigious amount of work in a very short time. While I took a lightweight MacBook Air, she took her regular PC that she is used to typing on, and she literally transcribed as the sessions were occurring. She just added her photos later, and since she was working on a platform that she was familiar with, she could crop and make the other adjustments you never see but we perform behind the scenes before publishing a photo.

On the other hand, I struggled with a keyboard that works differently and is a different size than I’m used to as well as not being familiar with the photo tools to reduce the size of pictures, so I just took rough notes and wrote the balance later. Having familiar tools make such a difference. I think I’ll carry my laptop from now on, even though it is much heavier. Kudos to Jennifer!

I was initially going to summarize each session, but since Jen did such a good job, I’m posting her links. No need to recreate a wheel that doesn’t need to be recreated.

ISOGG, the International Society of Genetic Genealogy is not affiliated with Family Tree DNA or any testing company, but Family Tree DNA is generous enough to allow an ISOGG meeting on Sunday before the first conference session.

Those of you where are members of the ISOGG Yahoo group for project administrators can view photos posted by Katherine Borges in that group and there are also some postings on the Facebook ISOGG group as well.

Now that you have the links for the summaries, what I’d like to do is to discuss some of the aspects I found the most interesting.

The Mix

When I attended my first conference 10 years ago, I somehow thought that for the most part, the same group of people would be at the conferences every year. Some were, and in fact, a handful of the 160+ people attending this conference have attended all 10 conferences. I know of two others for certain, but there were maybe another 3 or so who stood up when Bennett asked for everyone who had been present at all 10 conferences to stand.

Doug Mumma, the very first project administrator was with us this weekend, and still going strong. Now, if Doug and I could just figure out how we’re related…

Some of the original conference group has passed on to the other side where I’m firmly convinced that one of your rewards is that you get to see all of those dead ends of your tree. If we’re lucky, we get to meet them as well and ask all of those questions we have on this side. We remember our friends fondly, and their departure sadly, but they enriched us while they were here and their memories make us smile. I’m thinking specifically of Kenny Hedgepath and Leon Little as I write this, but there have been others as well.

The definition of a community is that people come and go, births, deaths and moves.

This year, about half of the attendees had never attended a conference before. I was very pleased to see this turn of events – because in order to survive, we do need new people who are as crazy as we are…er….I mean as dedicated as we are.

I asked people about their favorite part of the conference or their favorite session. I was surprised at the number of people who said lunches and dinners. Trust me, the food wasn’t that wonderful, so I asked them to elaborate. In essence, the most valuable aspect of the conference was working with and talking to other administrators.

It’s not like we don’t talk online, but there is somehow a difference between online communications and having a group discussion, or a one-on-one discussion. Laptops were out and in use everyplace, along with iPads and other tools. It was so much fun to walk by tables and hear snippets of conversations like “the mutation at location 309.1….” and “null marker at 425” and “I ordered a kit for my great uncle…..”

I agree, as well. I had pre-arranged two dinners before arriving in order to talk with people with whom I share specific interests. At lunches, I either tried to sit with someone I specifically needed to talk to, or I tried to meet someone new.

I also asked people about their specific goals for the next year. Some people had a particular goal in mind, such as a specific brick wall that needs focus. Some, given that we are administrators, had wider-ranging project based goals, like Big Y testing certain family groups, and a surprising number had the goal of better utilizing the autosomal results.

Perhaps that’s why there were two autosomal sessions, an introduction by Jim Bartlett and then Tim Janzen’s more advanced session.

Autosomal DNA Results

Note the cool double helix light fixture behind the speakers.

Tim specifically mentioned two misconceptions which I run across constantly.

Misconception 1 – A common surname means that’s how you match. Just because you find a common surname doesn’t mean that’s your DNA match. This belief is particularly prevalent in the group of people who test at Ancestry.com.

Misconception 2 – Your common ancestor has to be within the past 6 generations. Not true, many matches can be 6-10th cousins because there are so many descendants of those early ancestors, even as many as 15 generations back.

Tim also mentioned that endogamous relationships are a tough problem with no easy answer. Polynesians, Ashkenazi Jews, Low German Mennonites, Acadians, Amish, and island populations. Do I ever agree with him! I have Brethren, Mennonite and Acadian in the same parent’s line.

Tim has graciously made his entire presentation available for download.

There are probably a dozen or so of us that are actively mapping our ancestors, and a huge backlog of people who would like to. As Tim pointed out with one of his slides, this is not an easy task nor is it for the people who simply want to receive “an answer.”

I will also add that we “mappers” are working with and actively encouraging Family Tree DNA to develop tools so that the mapping is less spreadsheet manual work and more automated, because it certainly can be.

Upload GEDCOM Files

If you haven’t already, upload your GEDCOM to Family Tree DNA. This is becoming an essential part of autosomal matching. Furthermore, Family Tree DNA will utilize this file to construct your surname list and that will help immensely determining common surnames and your common ancestor with your Family Finder matches. If you have sponsored tests for cousins, then upload a GEDCOM file for them or at least construct a basic tree on their Family Tree DNA page.

Ethics

Family Tree DNA always tries to provide a speaker about ethics, and the only speakers I’ve ever felt understood anything about what we want to do are Judy Russell and Blaine Bettinger. I was glad to see Blaine presenting this year.

The essence of Blaine’s speech is that ethics isn’t about law. Law is cut and dried. Ethics isn’t, and there are no ethics police.

Sometimes our decisions are colored necessarily by right and wrong. Sometimes those decisions are more about the difference between a better and a worse way.

As a community, we want to reduce negative press coverage and increase positive coverage. We want to be proactive, not reactive.

Blaine stresses that while informed consent is crucial, that DNA doesn’t reveal secrets that aren’t also revealed by other genealogical forms of research. DNA often reveals more recent secrets, such as adoptions and NPEs, so it’s possibly more sensitive.

Two things need to govern our behavior. First, we need to do only things that we would be comfortable seeing above the fold in the New York Times. Second, understand that we can’t make promises about topics like anonymity or about the absence of medical information, because we don’t know what we don’t know.

The SNP Tsunami

One of my concerns has been and remains the huge number of new SNPs that have been discovered over the past year or so with the Big Y by Family Tree DNA and corresponding tests from other vendors.

When I say concern, I’m thrilled about this new technology and the advances it is allowing us to make as a community to discover and define the evolution of haplogroups. My concern is that the amount of data is overwhelming. However, we are working through that, thanks to the hours and hours of volunteer work by haplogroup administrators and others.

Alice Fairhurst, who volunteers to maintain the ISOGG haplotree, mentioned that she has added over 10,000 SNPs to the Y tree this year alone, bringing the total to over 14,000. Those SNPs are fully vetted and placed. There are many more in process and yet more still being discovered. On the first page of the Y SNP tree, the list of SNP sources and other critical information, such as the criteria for a SNP to be listed, is provided.

So, if you’re waiting for that next haplotree poster, give it up because there isn’t a printing press that big, unless you want wallpaper.

These slides are from Alice’s presentation. The ISOGG tree provides an invaluable resource for not only the genetic genealogy community, but also researchers world-wide.

As one example of how the SNP tsunami has affected the Y tree, Alice provided the following summary of R-U106, one of the two major branches of haplogroup R.

From the ISOGG 2006 Y tree, this was the entire haplogroup R Y tree. You can see U106 near the bottom with 3 sub-branches. While this probably makes you chuckle today, remember that 2006 was only 8 years ago and that this tree didn’t change much for several years.

2007 was the same.

2008 shows 5 subclades and one of the subclades had 2 subclades.

2009 showed a total of 12 sub-branches and 2010 added one more.

2011 however, showed a large change. U106 in 2011 had 44 subgroups total and became too large to show on one screen shot. 2012 shows 99 subclades, if I counted accurately. The 2014 U106 tree is shown below.

There’s another slide too, but I didn’t manage to get the picture. You get the idea though…

As you can imagine, for Family Tree DNA, trying to keep up with all of the haplogroups, not just one subgroup like U106 is a gargantuan task that is constantly changing, like hourly. Their Y tree is currently the National Geographic tree, and while they would like to update it, I’m sure, the definition of “current tree” is in a constant state of flux. Literally, Mike Walsh, one of the admins in the R-L21 group uploads a new tree spreadsheet several times every day.

In order to deal attempt to deal with this, and to encourage people who don’t want to do a Big Y discovery type test, but do want to ferret out their location on their assigned portion of the tree, Family Tree DNA is reintroducing the Backbone tests.

They are starting with M222, also known as the Niall of the 9 Hostages haplogroup which is their beta for the new product and new process. You can see the provisional tree and results in the two slides they provided, below. I apologize for the quality, but it was the best I could do.

Haplogroup administrators are going to be heavily involved in this process. Family Tree DNA is putting SNP panels together that will help further define the tree and where various SNPs that have been recently discovered, and continue to be discovered, will fall on the tree.

As Big Y tests arrive, haplogroup project administrators typically assemble a spreadsheet of the SNPS and provisionally where they fall on the tree, based on the Big Y results.

What Bennett asked is for the admins to work with Family Tree DNA to assemble a testing panel based on those results. The goal is for the cost to be between $1.50 and $2 (US) for each SNP in the panel, which will reduce the one-off SNP testing and provide a much more complete and productive result at a far reduced price as compared to the current $29 or $39 per individual SNP.

If you are a haplogroup administrator, get in touch with Family Tree DNA to discuss your desired backbone panels. New panels, when it’s your turn, will take about 2 weeks to develop.

Keep in mind that the following SNPs, according to Bennett, are not optimal for panels:

Palindromic regions

Often mutating regions designated as .1, .2, etc.

SNPs in STRs

Nir Leibovich, the Chief Business Officer, also addressed the future and the Big Y to some extent in his presentation.

Utilizing the Big Y for Genealogy

In my case, during the last sale, I ordered several Big Y tests for my Estes family line because I have several genealogically documented lines from the original Estes family in Kent, England through our common ancestor, Robert Estes born in 1555 and his wife Anne Woodward. The participants also agreed to extend their markers to 111 markers as well. When the results are back, we’ll be able to compare them on a full STR marker set, and also their SNPs. Hopefully, they will match on their known SNPs and there will be some new novel variants that will be able to suffice as line marker mutations.

We need more BIG Y tests of these types of genealogically confirmed trees that have different sons’ lines from a distant common ancestor to test descendant lines. This will help immensely to determine the actual, not imputed, SNP mutation rate and allow us to extrapolate the ages of haplogroups more accurately. Of course, it also goes without saying that it helps to flesh out the trees.

I personally expect the next couple of years will be major years of discovery. Yes, the SNP tsumani has hit land, but it’s far from over.

Research and Development

David Mittleman, Chief Scientific Officer, mentioned that Family Tree DNA now has their own R&D division where they are focused on how to best analyze data. They have been collaborating with other scientists. A haplogroup G1 paper will be published shortly which states that SNP mutation rates equate to Sanger data.

FTDNA wants to get Big Y data into the public domain. They have set up consent for this to be done by uploading into NCBI. Initially they sent a survey to a few people that sampled the interest level. Those who were interested received a release document. If you are interested in allowing FTDNA to utilize your DNA for research, be it mitochondrial, Y or autosomal, please send them an e-mail stating such.

Don’t Forget About Y Genealogy Research

It’s very easy for us to get excited about the research and discovery aspect of DNA – and the new SNPs and extending haplotrees back in time as far as possible, but sometimes I get concerned that we are forgetting about the reason we began doing genetic genealogy in the first place.

Robert Baber’s presentation discussed the process of how to reconstruct a tree utilizing both genealogy and DNA results. It’s important to remember that the reason most of our participants test is to find their ancestors, not, primarily, to participate in the scientific process.

Robert has succeeded in reconstructing 110 or 111 markers of the oldest known Baber ancestor, shown above. I wrote about how to do this in my article titled, Triangulation for Y DNA.

Not only does this allow us to compare everyone with the ancestor’s DNA, it also provides us with a tool to fit individuals who don’t know specific genealogical line into the tree relatively accurately. When I say relatively, the accuracy is based on line marker mutations that have, or haven’t, happened within that particular family.

Jim illustrated how to do this as well, and his methodology is available at the link on his slide, below.

I had to laugh. I’ve often wondered what our ancestors would think of us today. Robert said that that 11 generations after Edward Baber died, he flew over church where Edward was buried and wondered what Edward would have thought about what we know and do today – cars, airplanes, DNA, radio, TV etc.. If someone looked in a crystal ball and told Edward what the future held 11 generations later, he would have thought that they were stark raving mad.

Eleven generations from my birth is roughly the year 2280. I’m betting we won’t be trying to figure out who our ancestors were through this type of DNA analysis then. This is only a tiny stepping stone to an unknown world, as different to us as our world is to Edward Baber and all of our ancestors who lived in a time where we know their names but their lives and culture are entirely foreign to ours.

Publications

When the Journal of Genetic Genealogy was active, I, along with other citizen scientists published regularly. The benefit of the journal was that it was peer reviewed and that assured some level of accuracy and because of that, credibility, and it was viewed by the scientific community as such. My co-authored works published in JOGG as well as others have been cited by experts in the academic community. It other words, it was a very valuable journal. Sadly, it has fallen by the wayside and nothing has been published since 2011. A new editor was recruited, but given their academic load, they have not stepped up to the plate. For the record, I am still hopeful for a resurrection, but in the mean time, another opportunity has become available for genetic genealogists.

Brad Larkin has founded the Surname DNA Journal, which, like JOGG, is free to both authors and subscribers. In case you weren’t aware, most academic journal’s aren’t. While this isn’t a large burden for a university, fees ranging from just over $1000 to $5000 are beyond the budget of genetic genealogists. Just think of how many DNA tests one could purchase with that money.

Brad has issued a call for papers. These papers will be peer reviewed, similarly to how they were reviewed for JOGG.

Take a look at the articles published in this past year, since the founding of Surname DNA Journal.

The citizen science community needs an avenue to publish and share. Peer reviewed journals provide us with another level of credibility for our work. Sharing is clearly the lynchpin of genetic genealogy, as it is with traditional genealogy. Give some thought about what you might be able to contribute.

Brad Larkin solicited nominations prior to the conference and awarded a Genetic Genealogist of the Year award. This year’s award was dually presented to Ian Kennedy in Australia, who, unfortunately, was not present, and to CeCe Moore, who just happened to follow Brad’s presentation with her own.

Don’t Forget about Mitochondrial DNA Either

I believe that mitochondrial DNA the most underutilized DNA tool that we have, often because how to use mitochondrial DNA, and what it can tell you, is poorly understood. I wrote about this in an article titled, Mitochondrial, The Maligned DNA.

Given that I work with mitochondrial DNA daily when I’m preparing client’s Personalized DNA Reports (orderable from your personal page at Family Tree DNA or directly from my website), I know just how useful mitochondrial can be and see those examples regularly. Unfortunately, because these are client reports, I can’t write about them publicly.

CeCe Moore, however, isn’t constrained by this problem, because one of the ways she contributes to genetic genealogy is by working with the television community, in particular Genealogy Roadshow and the PBS series, Finding Your Roots. Now, I must admit, I was very surprised to see CeCe scheduled to speak about mitochondrial DNA, because the area of expertise where she is best known is autosomal DNA, especially in conjunction with adoptee research.

During the research for the production of these shows, CeCe has utilized mitochondrial DNA with multiple celebrities to provide information such as the ethnic identification of the ancestor who provided the mitochondrial DNA as Native American.

Autosomal DNA testing has a broad but shallow reach, across all of your lines, but just back a few generations. Both Y and mitochondrial DNA have a very deep reach, but only on one specific line, which makes them excellent for identifying a common ancestor on that line, as well as the ethnicity of that individual.

I have seen other cases, where researchers connected the dots between people where no paper trail existed, but a relationship between women was suspected.

CeCe mentioned that currently there are only 44,000 full sequence results in the Family Tree DNA data base and and 185K total HVR1, HVR2 and full sequence tests. Y has half a million. We need to increase the data base, which, of course increases matches and makes everyone happier. If you haven’t tested your mitochondrial DNA to the full sequence level, this would be a great time!

There are several lessons on how to utilize mitochondrial DNA at this ISOGG link.

I’m very hopeful that CeCe’s presentation will be made available as I think her examples are quite powerful and will serve to inspire people. Actually, since CeCe is in the “movie business,” perhaps a short video clip could be made available on the FTDNA website for anyone who hasn’t tested their mitochondrial DNA so they can see an example of why they should!

myOrigins

I would be fibbing to you if I told you I am happy with myOrigins. I don’t feel that it is as sensitive as other methods for picking up minority admixture, in particular, Native American, especially in small amounts. Unfortunately, those small amounts are exactly what many people are looking for.

If someone has a great-great-great-great grandparent that is Native, they carry about 1%, more or less, of the Native ancestor’s DNA today. A 4X great grandparent puts their birth year in the range of 1800-1825 – or just before the Trail of Tears. People whose colonial American families intermarried with Native families did so, generally, before the Trail of Tears. By that time, many tribes were already culturally extinct and those east of the Mississippi that weren’t extinct were fighting for their lives, both literally and figuratively.

We really need the ability to develop the most sensitive testing to report even the smallest amounts of Native DNA and map those segments to our chromosomes so that we can determine who, and what line in our family, was Native.

I know that Family Tree DNA is looking to improve their products, and I provided this feedback to them. Many people test autosomally only for their ethnicity results and I surely would love to have those people’s results available as matches in the FTDNA data base.

Razib Khan has been working with Family Tree DNA on their myOrigins product and spoke about how the myOrigins data is obtained.

Given that all humans are related, one way or another, far enough back in time, myOrigins has to be able to differentiate between groups that may not be terribly different. Furthermore, even groups that appear different today may not have been historically. His own family, from India, has no oral history of coming from the East, but the genetic data clearly indicates that they did, along with a larger group, about 1000 years ago. This may well be a result of the adage that history is written by the victors, or maybe whatever happened was simply too long ago or unremarkable to be recorded.

Razib mentioned that depending on the cluster and the reference samples, that these clusters and groups that we see on our myOrigins maps can range from 1000-10,000 years in age.

The good news is that genetics is blind to any preconceived notions. The bad news is that the software has to fit your results to the best population, even though it may not be directly a fit. Hopefully, as we have more and better reference populations, the results will improve as well.

Razib showed a PCA (principal components analysis) graph, above. These graphs chart reference populations in different quadrants. Where the different populations overlap is where they share common historic ancestors. As you can see, on this graph with these reference populations, there is a lot of overlap in some cases, and none in others.

Your personal results would then be plotted on top of the reference populations. The graph below shows me, as the white “target” on a PCA graph created by Doug McDonald.

The Changing Landscape

A topic discussed privately among the group, and primarily among the bloggers, is the changing landscape of genetic genealogy over the past year or so. In many ways I think the bloggers are the canaries in the mine.

One thing that clearly happened is that the proverbial tipping point occurred, and we’re past it. DNA someplace along the line became mainstream. Today, DNA is a household word. At gatherings, at least someone has tested, and most people have heard about DNA testing for genealogy or at least consumer based DNA testing.

The good news in all of this is that more and more people are testing. The bad news is that they are typically less informed and are often impulse purchasers. This gives us the opportunity for many more matches and to work with new people. It also means there is a steep learning curve and those new testers often know little about their genealogy. Those of us in the “public eye,” so to speak, have seen an exponential spike in questions and communications in the past several months. Unfortunately, many of the new people don’t even attempt to help themselves before asking questions.

Sometimes opportunity comes with work clothes – for them and us both.

I was talking with Spencer about this at the reception and he told me I was stealing his presentation. He didn’t seem too upset by this:)

I had to laugh, because this falls clearly into the “be careful what you wish for, you may get it” category. The Genographic project through National Geographic is clearly, very clearly, a critical component of the tipping point, and this was reflected in Spencer’s presentation. Although I covered quite a bit of Spencer’s presentation in my day 2 summary, I want to close with Spencer here. I also want to say that if you ever have the opportunity to hear Spencer speak, please do yourself the favor and be sure to take that opportunity. Not only is he brilliant, he’s interesting, likeable and very approachable. Of course, it probably doesn’t hurt that I’ve know him now for 9 years! I’ve never thought to have my picture taken with Spencer before, but this time, one of my friends did me the favor.

I have to admit, I love talking to Spencer, and listening to him. He is the adventurer through whom we all live vicariously. In the photo below, Spencer along with his crew, drove from London to Mongolia. Not sure why he is standing on the top of the Land Rover, but I’m sure he will tell us in his upcoming book about that journey,

I’m warning you all now, if I win the lottery, I’m going on the world tour that he hosts with National Geographic, and of course, you’ll all be coming with me via the blog!

Spencer talked about the consumer genomics market and where we are today.

Spencer mentioned that genetic genealogy was a cottage industry originally. It was, and it was even smaller than that, if possible. It actually was started by Bennett and his cell phone. I managed to snap a picture of Bennett this weekend on the stage looking at his cell, and I thought to myself, “this is how it all started 14 years ago.” Just look where we are today. Thank you Michael Hammer for telling Bennett that you received “lots of phone calls from crazy genealogists like you.”

So, where exactly are we today? In 2013, the industry crossed the millionth kit line. The second millionth kit was sold in early summer 2014 and the third million will be sold in 2015. No wonder we feel like a tidal wave has hit. It has.

Why now?

DNA has become part of national consciousness. Businesses advertise that “it’s in our DNA.” People are now comfortable sharing via social media like facebook and twitter. What DNA can do and show you, the secrets it can unlock is spreading by word of mouth. Spencer termed this the “viral spread threshold” and we’ve crossed that invisible line in the sand. He terms 2013 as the year of infection and based on my blog postings, subscriptions, hits, reach and the number of e-mails I receive, I would completely agree. Hold on tight for the ride!

Spencer talked about predictions for near term future and said a 5 year plan is impossible and that an 18 month plan is more realistic. He predicts that we will continue to see exponential growth over the next several years. He feels that genetic genealogy testing will be primary driver of growth because medical or health testing is subject to the clinical utility trap being experienced currently by 23andMe. The Big 4 testing companies control 99% of consumer market in US (Ancestry, 23andMe, Family Tree DNA and National Geographic.)

Spencer sees a huge international market potential that is not currently being tapped. I do agree with him, but many in European countries are hesitant, and in some places, like France, DNA testing that might expose paternity is illegal. When Europeans see DNA testing as a genealogical tool, he feels they will become more interested. Most Europeans know where their ancestral village is, or they think they do, so it doesn’t have the draw for them that it does for some of us.

Ancestry testing (aka genetic genealogy as opposed to health testing) is now a mature industry with 100% growth rate.

Spencer also mentioned that while the Genographic data base is not open access, that affiliate researchers can send Nat Geo a proposal and thereby gain research access to the data base if their proposal is approved. This extends to citizen scientists as well.

Michael Hammer

You’ll notice that Michael Hammer’s presentation, “Ancient and Modern DNA Update, How Many Ancestral Populations for Europe,” is missing from this wrapup. It was absolutely outstanding, and fascinating, which is why I’m writing a separate article about his presentation in conjunction with some additional information. So, stay tuned.

Testing, More Testing

It’s becoming quite obvious that the people who are doing the best with genetic genealogy are the ones who are testing the most family members, both close and distant. That provides them with a solid foundation for comparison and better ways to “drop matches” into the right ancestor box. For example, if someone matches you and your mother’s sister, Aunt Margaret, especially if your mother is not available to test, that’s a very important hint that your match is likely from your mother’s line.

So, in essence, while initially we would advise people to test the oldest person in a generational line, now we’ve moved to the “test everyone” mentality. Instead of a survey, now we need a census. The exception might be that the “child” does not necessarily need to be tested because both parents have tested. However, having said that, I would perhaps not make that child’s test a priority, but I would eventually test that child anyway. Why? Because that’s how we learn. Let me give you an example.

I was sitting at lunch with David Pike. were discussing autosomal DNA generational transmission and inheritance. He pulled out his iPad, passed it to me, and showed me a chromosome (not the X) that has been passed entirely intact from one generation to the next. Had the child not been tested, we would never have known that. Now, of course, if you’ll remember the 50% rule, by statistical prediction, the child should get half of the mother’s chromosome and half of the father’s, but that’s not how it worked. So, because we don’t know what we don’t know, I’m now testing everyone I can find and convince in my family. Unfortunately, my family is small.

Full genome testing is in the future, but we’re not ready yet. Several presenters mentioned full genome testing in some context. Here’s the bottom line. It’s not truly full genome testing today, only 95-96%. The technology isn’t there yet, and we’re still learning. In a couple of years, we will have the entire genome available for testing, and over time, the prices will fall. Keep in mind that most of our genome is identical to that of all humans, and the autosomal tests today have been developed in order to measure what is different and therefore useful genealogially. I don’t expect big breakthroughs due to full genome testing for genetic genealogy, although I could be wrong. You can, however, count me in, because I’m a DNA junkie. When the full genome test is below $1000, when we have comparison tools and when the coverage won’t necessitate doing a second or upgrade test a few years later, I’ll be there.

Thank you

I want to offer a heartfelt thank you to Max Blankfeld and Bennett Grenspan, founders of Family Tree DNA, shown with me in the photo below, for hosting and subsidizing the administrator’s conference – now for a decade. I look forward to seeing them, and all of the other attendees, next year.

I anticipate that this next decade will see many new discoveries resulting in tools that make our genealogy walls fall. I can’t help but wonder what the article I’ll be writing on the 20th anniversary looking back at nearly a quarter century of genetic genealogy will say!

In these articles, Dr. Doe tells us that last year, in a class he was teaching, he used the 23andMe test to demonstrate how to collect a spit sample.

In fact, he was so excited that he bought kits for his parents as well:

“I had spent many years looking at the genes of other animals — particularly mice — but I never looked at my own. Because I was so excited about it, I got two 23andMe kits for my mom and dad as gifts. It’s a lot more fun when you can incorporate your family because you can trace not just the chromosomes but individual alleles on the chromosome so you don’t just see them, but where they came from. Also, I felt I had a good handle on my family’s medical history so I was very interested in confirming any susceptibility to cancers that I heard had run in my family, like colon cancer. I wanted to know if I had a genetic risk.”

But Dr. Doe found more than he anticipated. He found a half brother, an adoptee, sired by his father.

“When I saw that I share about 22 percent of my genome with a person, I thought, “That’s huge.” It took a bit of time to realize Thomas and I actually share the same genome with my father. This is how it happened: when you share around 25 percent genetic similarity with someone, that means that either it’s your grandfather, uncle, or half-sibling. 23andMe listed Thomas as a grandfather, which was confusing to me. I called my dad. All I had was his name, Thomas, and the fact that he’s male. I just asked my dad, “Does this name sound familiar?” He said no. He logged into his account, and Thomas wasn’t showing up at all. I was so confused. We figured out that at the very bottom of your profile, there’s a little box that says “check this box if you want to see close family members in this search program.”

Dad checked it, and Thomas’ name appeared in his list. 23andMe said dad was 50 percent related with Thomas and that he was a predicted son.”

Given Dr. Doe’s next comments, one can surmise that this child was not conceived before Dr. Does’ parents married, nor was Dr. Doe’s father a sperm donor.

“Years of repressed memories and emotions uncorked and resulted in tumultuous times that have torn my nuclear family apart. My parents divorced. No one is talking to my dad. We’re not anywhere close to being healed yet and I don’t know how long it will take to put the pieces back together.”

Correction Note: CeCe Moore provides information that Doe’s half-brother was conceived prior to the marriage, as reported by Belluz. However, we don’t know that the conception was outside of the time span of the relationship of the parents. CeCe also states that “both Neil Schwartzman and I were misquoted/misrepresented in the article. Neil says that he never told her it was a negative experience for him. (Some of my quotes have been changed – with no correction noted interestingly, but there is still some misrepresentation of our conversation.) So, this does make me wonder if Ms. Belluz got Doe’s story exactly right as well. Ms. Belluz clearly had an agenda and twisted the “truth” to support it.”

At this point, I felt really bad for the Doe family, and I still do. But Dr. Doe’s next paragraph bothered me when I first read it and it bothers me now.

Instead of laying the blame for this problem where it clearly resides, at the feet of his father, he is unhappy instead with the testing company, in this case, 23andMe.

“After this discovery was made, I went back to 23andMe and talked to them. I said, “I’m not sure all your customers realize that when they participate in your family finder program, they’re participating in what are essentially really advanced paternity tests.” People find out that their parents aren’t who they think they are. They have nearly a million people in the database. If there happens to be anyone in there you’re related to, they’ll find your match. This is a solid science.”

Dr. Doe goes onto say;

“I don’t want to say if I knew that I wouldn’t have participated. But I’m really devastated at the outcome. I wrestle with these emotions. I love my family. This is nothing I ever would have wished. My dream would be to introduce Thomas to dad, to incorporate a new family tradition, to merge families. We all get to broaden our horizons and live happily ever after. At least right now, that’s not what happened. I still hold out hope that in time we can resolve things. But I also worry that as these transitions happen there may have been some permanent emotional damage that may not be able to be undone.”

Dr. Doe goes on to say that 23andMe isn’t doing enough to protect the public from themselves, in essence. 23andMe did and does have a special box to click to indicate that you DO want to see close relatives. Most people have no idea that this box even exists, let alone that they need to click it. In fact, the mere fact that you have to click the box, and it’s not front and center, makes your results unreliable because you believe that you’re seeing all of your results, when you aren’t. He even describes how this option confused his father and his father could not see his children. His father isn’t the only one. This option has caused more panic among families that “should” match until someone explains this hidden “Opt In” option and where they have to click.

Now, I’ve been quiet all week, mulling this situation over. While I was mulling, 23andMe, who had previously announced that they were going to make seeing close relatives an “opt out” instead of an “opt in,” announced they had changed their mind. Coincidence? Doubtful. In fact, Vox, who published the original two articles also published 23andMe’s announcement and stated that the announcement was a result of their original articles.

I find this stance personally abhorrent. I believe that the people who test have the right to the truth – all of it – and not just if they happen to discover that all of their results are not being displayed. They are adults. They choose to take, or not take the test. If you take the test, you have every right to expect you’re seeing all of your results.

Dr. Doe, of all people, has absolutely no right to complain. He, of all people, a PhD in this field, knew exactly what he could discover. The problem is that the truth is sometimes inconvenient and ugly, especially if you don’t expect to discover that your father cheated on your mother, or vice versa.

Dr. Doe – the problem is not that 23andMe did not protect you from yourself. You, admittedly, clicked right through the options, believing of course, that it “couldn’t be me.” The problem is your family’s choices, perhaps then, and certainly now.

23andMe’s reversal on their policy will do nothing, absolutely nothing, to protect people like Dr. Doe from himself. The only policy that will do that is the French policy of making DNA testing illegal to “protect the family unit.” God forbid that we ever become that paranoid.

What 23andMe’s policy does it to continue to obscure the truth from unsuspecting testers. Unfortunately, even if they put a big red box dead center in the screen today that says “If you don’t click here, you won’t see close relatives including sons, daughters……,” many people will never see it, because many people never sign on again after receiving their initial results. In other words, many of their clients’ data would remain dark. The only way to solve that problem is to do what 23andMe announced they would do and were preparing to do, to shift the option from “Opt In” to “Opt Out,” until Dr. Doe created a publicity nightmare because he couldn’t handle the results of his own test, AFTER, he intentionally and with full knowledge, clicked the “Opt In” option.

Furthermore, Dr. Doe could have discovered the same thing if he had found his father’s old journals, for example. He could have discovered an old letter from a sweetheart. He could have found the letter telling his father that the child would be put up for adoption. What would he have done then? Who would he complain to that no one protected him from himself? The company that created the paper and the ink??? The post office because they might deliver a letter with disturbing information inside?

I don’t mean to be insensitive here, but it’s vastly unfair to make hundreds of thousands of people pay the price for Dr. Doe’s family issues. The timing of this article with the much anticipated 23andMe change has created the perfect media storm. Dr. Doe whined, loudly, and publicly, and 23andMe doesn’t want to create even more negative publicity.

If you think that I’m speaking from an ivory tower, or a vacuum, so to speak, I’m not. Let me explain about infidelity and betrayal. After my former husband’s massive stroke, when I was in my late 30s and he was in his late 40s, I found pictures of him with another female, with the sailboat that I bought him. Yep, he was on vacation, with another woman, while I was staying home and working. I felt terribly, horribly betrayed…not to mention gullible, stupid and naïve…oh yes, and angry.

I found those pictures a month or two after his stroke, when he was so terribly incapacitated that he couldn’t even speak, sit up, or eat, let alone answer any questions. Really, there was nothing he could have said anyway – the pictures, multiple pictures, over multiple summers….were all the evidence I needed. But I wanted them, I so wanted them to not be true. But they were. Staring back at me in living color.

The truth was ugly and painful and devastating. But it was also freeing. It freed me from the pain of loss of something I never had – a loving and loyal husband. I only thought I did. At the time it was horrifically painful. Today, I’m incredibly grateful that I didn’t spend my entire married life with a cheating, lying scoundrel.

I also know about infidelity within a family when we discovered that my half-brother through my father was not my father’s child. I lived through the pain of that too, and I can tell you that my brother, Dave, who wasn’t my biological brother, and I were far closer than many biological family members.

My grandfather, about 1910, recently married to my grandmother, was present in his mother-in-law’s kitchen the day that a young man knocked on the back door. His mother-in-law, Nora Kirsch Lore had recently been widowed after being married to Curtis Benjamin “CB” Lore for more than 20 years. The young man asked for CB, by name. Nora asked him to come inside and figured he was one of the young men who had worked for CB in his construction and racehorse business. That’s not at all why the young man was looking for CB Lore. CB Lore, according to the young man’s mother, was his father. Let’s just say that it was a very awkward day in that kitchen as Nora asked the young man what year he was born.

In 1910, there was no way to prove, or disprove, this allegation. Today, there is – DNA. Nora too was devastated by her husband’s indiscretion, to put is softly, or outright betrayal to call it what it was. But she was not without a hint – he had always been somewhat of a playboy. Had she known specifically about this woman? No, but it didn’t entirely surprise her either. It only confirmed, or at least potentially confirmed, what she suspected happened when he traveled. It certainly was not this young man’s fault for showing up to find his father. Just like it isn’t DNA’s fault today.

Dr. Doe is not responsible for “outing” his father. His father obviously made his own choices. So did his mother.

Dr. Doe did not buy his parents a divorce, his parents did. Pure and simple. Their choice. Sounds like that divorce was, perhaps, years overdue.

What Dr. Doe gave his mother was possibly the gift of truth and freedom. Mrs. Doe obviously had the option of discussing things with her husband. She didn’t. Dr. Doe himself said it brought up repressed memories, and they obviously were not pleasant. This was only a festering scab and he, unfortunately, was the one who bumped up against it and knocked it off.

I’m glad Dr. Doe is getting help. I hope the entire family is getting help.

As I tell people, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. If you don’t want the truth, don’t DNA test. Period.

The culprit in this story is not Dr. Doe, is not 23andMe, but is very clearly Dr. Doe’s father’s original behavior combined with current family dynamics.

Sadly, the people that are ultimately paying the price for Dr. Does’ family turmoil are the hundreds of thousands of people that now continue to have their results obscured because of 23andMe’s abrupt change of policy.

That’s not right either.

23andMe lives and dies not on genetic genealogy or on the revenue from the tests themselves, but on their customers allowing them to use their results to compile for medical studies and to sell. If you want to make your feelings known, you can personally opt out of allowing 23andMe to utilize your results for those types of endeavors. In other words, 23andMe will no longer be able to make money from your DNA.

Our cousin, Cheryl, who grew up across the street from my grandparents’ house where my brother, John, spent a great deal of time mentioned one day in passing that John was known to be a “stinker” as a child. I’m sure she was not exaggerating. From all the stories I’ve heard, my brother, John was indeed a handful, and not much ever changed.

When going through Mother’s things after she departed this Earth, I found something, in John’s own hand, from when he was maybe 7 that proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he indeed fully earned his reputation.

John made Mom a Valentine. As all mothers are, I’m sure she was thrilled to receive something from her child. And then she opened it. The front is your typical children’s exchange Valentine – and I’m just as sure as I’m sitting here that my grandmother told him to write something to his mother on the back and tell her what he’d been up to…..so he did.

I got muddy five times.

I got in a fight Wednesday.

I got called down Tuesday.

I got in the coal bin Sunday and was I dirty.

I got a great big clok.

Yours truly,

John Curtus Bucher (Yes, he misspelled his own name.)

Indeed, I’m thinking that every day in John’s life was a new adventure just waiting to happen. This was probably an ordinary week in John’s life.

Not a lot changed in the following 60 years or so, except the magnitude of the trouble John got into. In 2011, the story of his weekly adventures started out something like this…..Sunday, I cut my leg with a chain saw…Monday, I got the tractor stuck in the mud…Tuesday, I went back to the woods and a tree fell on me……

My brother, John, passed away in October of 2012, ornery as ever, staunchly refusing to DNA test as he had for the past decade….asserting that he would rather “not know,” even in death. Actually, what he meant was that wanted to keep me from knowing, just on general principles…just because he could. Personally, I think he did that…or in this case…didn’t…just to irritate me…and he fully succeeded.

However, whether I agree or not with his motives or choices, I staunchly defend his right to them. So, for the record, it was NOT me who stole his toothbrush from his hospital room.

Nope, wasn’t me.

I know what you’re thinking.

Was not.

You see, I knew that toothbrush wouldn’t help at all.

I don’t know who used it, took it, or whose it was, but it wasn’t his.

Like this:

I’m sure most of my readers are familiar with the upheaval caused by 23andMe’s patent dubbed “Designer Babies” earlier this fall. Opinions on this were highly divergent with some folks feeling like it couldn’t really be done, so nothing to reasonably worry about, some who couldn’t wait and others who were appalled for various reasons. Today, Genomics Law Report (GLR) published what I feel is a very balanced article about the patent, the technology, the fallout and the future in an article titled “Designing Children.”

“With this post the GLR introduces a new Contributing Writer, Jonathan Webber. Jonathan is a web editor at Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, the law firm that sponsors the GLR. His duties include copy-editing the GLR. That exposure, together with his background in anthropology—he came to RBH with a degree in anthropology and experience as both a field archaeologist and cultural educator for a state park system—has sparked his interest in some of the cultural and ethical issues that genomics raises. In this first post he brings his perspective to bear on the implications of 23andMe’s “designer babies” patent, and we look forward to more of his insight in the future.”

The aspect in this article that surprised me the most was the “ethical parenting” commentary about New York City. I truthfully, had no idea that parents were “training” their children for pre-school entrance exams and more, nor that they were medicating them for the purpose.

As a parent myself, I know that any parent would avail themselves of any technology that would prevent or avert genetic diseases in their children. But what about selecting for high intelligence? That’s understandable too, whether one agrees with it or not, and 13% of parents in a survey said they would select for that, if they could. But what about athletic prowess? Ten percent of the parents said they would select for athletic prowess. Is this now into the frivolous? Or what about a selecting for a blonde haired, blue eyed, slim daughter that the parents are hoping will be a beauty queen or a cheerleader? And of course, we haven’t even touched on the dark side of this in terms of parental motivation. All parents are not good parents nor do they all have their children’s best interests at heart.

Lots of questions and few answers about ethics, social responsibility and what the future holds. I hope you enjoy the article.